Charters serve fewer poor, disabled

State officials boasted in November that Florida charter students wereclosing the longtime achievement gap with peers at conventional publicschools.

A state report said a likely reason was a "more diverse student population"at charters today, similar to that at traditional schools.

Only two paragraphs in the report, titled "A Decade of Progress," discusseda different change that also can affect a school's test scores: the shrinkingpercentage of poor and disabled charter students.

A majority are doing what some opponents predicted more than 10 years ago:serving primarily the affluent and the able while harder-to-teach childrenremain in regular public schools.

In 1996, charters served about the same share of these students as regularcampuses. Ten years later, they trail conventional schools by 10 percentagepoints in enrollment of poor children and 3 percentage points in terms of thedisabled.

The imbalance is more dramatic at the individual-school level. Two out ofthree charters taught a smaller share of disabled children last year than theaverage public school in their home counties, the Orlando Sentinel found.

The same held true for students who qualified for free and reduced-pricemeals, a traditional measure of poverty. Sixty percent of charters served asmaller portion of these children than their typical district school.

"It is a choice program and the prerogative of parents," he said."Sometimes charters are not the right environment for that particular child."

T. Willard Fair, chairman of the State Board of Education, lamented thatfewer charters catered to poor and minority students than when the movementstarted. He urged charter operators to re-examine their commitment to suchstudents.

"This movement will not survive if it's seen as a white, middle-classmovement," said Fair, who started Liberty City Charter with future Gov. Jeb
Bush shortly after the law was passed.

But many charters present barriers to these children and their parents.

Nearly a third of Florida charter schools do not provide transportation tostudents, according to the state. Many also require parents to volunteer up to40 hours annually. Such policies can discourage poor, often-single parentsstruggling to balance their child's schooling with work.

Ronnie DeNoia, principal of A-rated Lake Eola Charter School in Orlando,said parent volunteers are crucial, providing help to teachers and showingtheir children that education is important. She said she provides volunteeractivities that can be performed after school for parents who work.

"The parents know this coming in," DeNoia said. "The end result is alwaysan academically prepared child."

Lake Eola lets families with at least two children in school pay a $300 feein lieu of volunteering, but it does not provide transportation. It has astudent-poverty rate of 2 percent.

About a mile away, the regular public school, Hillcrest Elementary, has apoverty rate of 47 percent.

Other charters ask parents to provide a copy of their "current healthinsurance card" or disclose whether their child has a disability before beingadded to a waiting list. Several recommend that parents of disabled studentstalk with a school official to "determine if our school's education designwill suit your expectations," even though state law requires that disabledstudents have equal access to schools.

Somerset Academy charters, with five schools in Broward County, includesthe stipulation on the application it requires parents to complete before itplaces children in a random drawing for admission. The schools had a combineddisability rate of 7 percent or less -- a little more than half the averageof other Broward schools last year.

Low student achievement also is used as a barrier.

Genell Mills, principal of School of Success Academy Charter Middle inJacksonville, told her charter peers at a state town-hall meeting last yearthat she turned away students who score low on the FCAT. Several of the morethan 200 charter-school officials nodded in agreement.

"I can't take them anymore," said Mills, who also ran a charter high schooluntil the school district closed it last summer for earning a second F."You've got to learn to play the game, or we are not going to survive."

The student-disability rate at her middle-school charter is less than halfof Duval County's average. It earned a D in 2006. A nearby regular publicmiddle school, Jefferson Davis, garnered a B with more than twice thepercentage of disabled kids and a slightly higher share of poor ones.

Vicki McClure can be reached at vmcclure@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5540. Mary Shanklin can be reached at 407-420-5538 or mshanklin@orlandosentinel.com.